Not really. They're already using best weapons. And even Mercs are a fodder. All it takes is to nuke hangars.
Well, yes, hangar nuking is pretty much
the response to hideout assaults. But past the first one, you are (should be?) putting your loot severely at risk, and your VIP captures too since you're likely to obliterate everything. If you're willing to sacrifice both, then sure it's easy. But if the use of nukes becomes the way out of nasty crackdowns, that defeats farming and all is good as far as I'm concerned. So basically, my suggestion is/was "crackdowns should be nasty, best taken out either by air combat, base defence facilities or base defence tactics that are not conducive to farming". If you want the loot, shoot the things down and go get it. Shooting down a cruiser to get the VIP inside, even with the shield buff that makes beams useless, is totally doable. You don't need "loot delivery".
A task team of stormtroopers/marsec/mercs with boomguns, plasma spitters and scorchers + a few blasters or something (ie stuff that snapshots well + explodes to kill when having near misses and destroy walls) is a force that the factions should be able and willing to afford to get rid of a group that plagues their shipping. It even makes sense for them to deploy that way (similar to using flamethrowers to clear out tunnels/bunkers). It's not that much compared to all the ships that they deploy for a retaliation. Bring out the big guns on the ground like they do in the sky and teach them pirates that it wasn't a good idea to challenge their supremacy.
